All jobs by place and trade · Logistics, Transport & Warehousing
Driving work, 39 ways in
Most job boards file every lorry vacancy under "HGV driver" and leave it there. No driver has ever thought about it that way. You think: is it Class 1 or Class 2, what is on the back of it, and do I sleep in the cab. So that is how this page is arranged.
The licence
Class 1, C+E, artic
The articulated lorry: a tractor unit and a separate trailer, 44 tonnes on six axles. Class 1 is the top of the goods licence...
Class 2, category C, rigid
A rigid lorry where the cab and the body are one vehicle, usually 18 or 26 tonnes. Most multi drop, refuse, tipper, mixer and...
7.5 tonne, category C1
The step between a van and a lorry. Anyone who passed a car test before 1 January 1997 has C1 on their licence already and...
Van, 3.5 tonne, category B
A car licence and a Transit or a Sprinter. No tacho, no CPC, and by far the commonest driving job advertised in the UK.
Luton and tail lift
A box body on a 3.5 tonne chassis with a lift on the back. Furniture, white goods, home delivery, two person crews.
Bus and coach, category D, PCV
Service buses, school runs, private hire coaches and tours. A completely separate licence and a completely separate CPC from goods.
What is on the back
Curtainsider
The commonest trailer on the road. Curtains down each side so a forklift can load from anywhere, which is why general haulage...
Fridge, temperature controlled, reefer
Insulated trailer with a fridge unit on the front. Supermarket, food service and pharmaceutical work. Temperature is recorded...
Flatbed and step frame
An open trailer. Steel, timber, building materials, machinery. Everything you carry has to be secured by you and it is on show...
Fuel tanker
Petrol and diesel into filling stations, usually nights, usually shift work, and the most heavily trained corner of UK driving.
Food tanker
Milk, edible oils, chocolate, liquid sugar. Food grade tanks, hoses you look after, and cleaning stations between loads.
ADR tanker and dangerous goods
Chemicals, gases, corrosives, flammable liquids. ADR is an INTERNATIONAL agreement with forty eight signatory countries...
Bulk tipper and bulker
Aggregates, grain, animal feed, sand. The trailer tips or blows off. Quarries, farms and construction sites rather than loading bays.
Walking floor
A trailer whose floor slats crawl the load out of the back, so it unloads without tipping. Waste, biomass, recycling, wood chip.
Skip lorry
Drop an empty, pick up a full one, all day, in and out of tight yards and domestic driveways. Class 2, local, home every night.
Hook loader and RoRo
The bigger brother of the skip lorry: roll on roll off containers at transfer stations and industrial sites, usually 32 tonnes...
Refuse and bin wagon
Household and trade collections for a council or a contractor, with a crew on the back. Early starts, fixed rounds, home the...
Tipper, construction
Muckaway off construction sites and aggregate on to them. Eight wheelers, weighbridges, and sites that do not run to your schedule.
HIAB and lorry loader
A crane mounted behind the cab so you load and unload yourself. Builders merchants, steel, timber, plant movements.
Moffett, truck mounted forklift
A forklift that rides on the back of the lorry so you offload where there is no forklift waiting. Builders merchants and...
Car transporter
Loading cars on to double and triple decks, compounds, dealerships and ports. Skilled, slow to learn, and expensive when it goes wrong.
Concrete mixer
Ready mixed concrete from the plant to the pour. The load has a clock on it, so it goes when the plant says and not when you are ready.
Container and skeletal
Boxes off the ports on a skeletal trailer. Felixstowe, Southampton, London Gateway, Liverpool. Twist locks, pin positions and...
Low loader and heavy haulage
Excavators, cranes and plant on a low bed. Ramps, winches, chains, and route planning around every low bridge in the county.
Abnormal and oversize loads
Anything over the ordinary limits for width, length, height or weight. Notifications to the police and the highway authority,...
Livestock
Live animals to markets, farms and abattoirs. Decks, ramps, bedding, washing out, and welfare rules with teeth.
Multi deck and double deck
Two floors in one trailer, so nearly twice the pallets per run. Retail and parcel networks. Nearly five metres high, which...
Rear steer
A rigid with a steering rear axle so it turns in a length that should not be possible. City centre and tight site delivery.
Wagon and drag
A rigid lorry pulling a separate drawbar trailer. Common in parcels and in agriculture, and it reverses like nothing else on the road.
Longer semi trailer, LST
The 15.65 metre trailer, about two metres longer than standard, permanent on UK roads since 2023 after a long trial. More...
How the work runs
This is the part no board indexes, and it is the first question every driver asks. An advert that says "home every night" or "four on four off" in the headline will out pull a bigger salary that says nothing.
Tramping, nights out
You live in the cab from Monday to Friday, sometimes longer. You are paid a night out allowance on top of the wage and you are...
Home every night
You start and finish at the same place and you sleep in your own bed. It is the single most requested thing in UK driving and...
Trunking
Depot to depot on a fixed run, usually at night, often a changeover half way where you swap trailers with a driver coming the...
Multi drop
Twenty, forty, sixty stops a day. Handballing, tail lifts, cages, PDA scanners, and traffic between every one of them.
Store and retail delivery
Supermarket regional distribution centre to shop and back with the empties. Roll cages, timed windows, and back doors that...
Shunting and yard work
Moving trailers around a yard all shift, on and off bays, coupling and uncoupling, sometimes on a road legal unit and...
Night work
Out when the roads are empty, which makes the driving easier and everything else harder.
Four on four off and fixed rotas
A fixed pattern rather than whatever the planner needs. Four on, four off, or three and three, or a two week rolling rota you...
Agency and ad hoc shifts
Shift by shift through an agency. You choose the days, you see a lot of different operations, and you have no guaranteed hours.
Bridge strikes
Know your height, read the signs, and if the worst happens ring the railway before you ring anybody else. That order is the part drivers are least often told plainly, and it is the part that stops an expensive day becoming a disaster.
Read it, and print the height table The tachograph Working time and your reference period